Social Media

Overstock.com Changes Name Back From "O.co"

After a short-lived rebranding to "O.co," Overstock.com will once again be known as Overstock.com.

The company's bold experiment with calling itself by that single-letter domain name began in June, but ended this month. "We have been listening to our customers and have learned that they we’ve moved too quickly in the transition," Jonathan Johnson, Overstock's president, tells Mashable. Johnson notes that customers continued to call the company "Overstock.com" even after the transition.

"What we learned was that we haven’t yet adequately transferred the decade of brand equity we have in Overstock.com. So, we’re down-shifting the rebranding effort in order to leverage and transfer that brand equity," he says. The company still wants consumers to use O.co as a short cut to reach its site. The Oakland sports stadium Overstock.com sponsors, which was renamed O.co Coliseum in August, will not change its name to "Overstock.com Coliseum," a company rep says.

Overstock is the latest company to find that consumers don't like it when you mess with their beloved brand names. Netflix learned the same lesson in September when it renamed its DVD service Qwikster and then changed the name back a few weeks later after a customer outcry.

But there have been other recent examples as well. RadioShack and Pizza Hut briefly changed their names to "The Shack" and "The Hut," respectively, before backing away from rebranding. "A lot of companies have made poor choices lately," says Rose Linke, director of client services for naming firm A Hundred Monkeys. "They discovered that everyone has an opinion about naming."

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.